Evidence of meeting #14 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 40th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chicken.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Yes. That means that the government is somewhat changing the way it tests chicken that comes from abroad in order to have, perhaps, more specific information—
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
—instead of simply weighing it. Beforehand, was it based on weight?
General Manager, Chicken Farmers of Canada
Exactly, or we simply looked at the label.
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Yes, obviously that does not tell us... But we are still facing another real problem, namely, whether or not the chicken that is supposed to go back to the United States actually does. It is not easy to monitor this situation.
What would you suggest we do so that we can have some peace of mind and know exactly whether or not the people who import chicken here, regardless of whether it comes from Brazil or the United States, really do respect the rules?
General Manager, Chicken Farmers of Canada
Yes, absolutely, they have six months to import and six months to re-export. That also causes some synchronization problems.
If the market is good, we import something, and then we re-export it when the market is not as good. So we use a lot of different things.
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
And what would your suggestion be as to how the government can monitor the situation?
General Manager, Chicken Farmers of Canada
We have asked the government to provide us with a list of the companies that participate in this program, but we have not been given this information. All of the other quota holders are indicated on the Foreign Affairs website, with the exception of the people who participated in this program.
If industry were told who participates, it could resolve the situation, to a certain extent, by itself. It would really be beneficial to know who is participating in the program.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you. Your time has expired, Mr. Bellavance.
Mr. Atamanenko is next, for seven minutes.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
Thank you very much to all of you for being here.
Maybe, John, I'll start with you, if you don't mind.
Your presentation was gut-wrenching. It shows that you basically haven't been able to be competitive because of the events that happened to you.
Was it the 148 days of quarantine that proved to be destructive? Is that the main decision that proved to be the most destructive to you? Also, 13 years have gone by; what would it take for you to once again become competitive and get back your reputation?
Farmer, As an Individual
I think we really have to visit what the root cause was. There's no doubt that we received the statutory compensation for the cattle ordered destroyed. That's under law. The 148-day quarantine literally destroyed our pastures and our management because it was a wet fall and everything was turned to mud. Our management has never totally recovered ever since, because instead of being able to sell cattle when we wanted to, we've been under the gun from the banks and everybody else down the line.
The moneys that we did receive were a statutory requirement that applies to all animals ordered slaughtered. By citing this as a reason for no further payment, the department has ignored our entire argument to the effect that the quarantine was made necessary due to CFIA accepting USDA procedures as evidence that the cattle had been properly tested. They should view this from the perspective that it's the CFIA's regulations, and the USDA must meet those regulations. Evidence exists on the certificate that this was not the case. Furthermore, I was utterly powerless to step between the USDA and the CFIA. I had no access to technology or expertise.
If you accept that, then everything that happened from the time of quarantine on down the line was a domino effect. We had no income for the last half of the year, and basically that is when we sell most of our cattle, so we really had very little income for the full year. We had about 460 head of cattle at that time, with plans to sell over 200 of them. It ended up that we were going into winter with the full load of cattle, which we couldn't handle, really, and we couldn't sell them.
Coming out the other side, because the cows were calving, etc., we had 750 head, but our reputation was destroyed in the process. It took years to try to rebuild that confidence, and I don't think we've ever quite achieved it.
When we got into a position where we could retire debt, things like September 11 hit us, and we had no option: we had to sell cattle. We couldn't say we'd wait six months, because we were under the gun from banks, etc.
The same thing happened with BSE. We were wounded going into BSE, so to survive this long is quite a feat. We were in a position in the fall of 2007 to reduce numbers to try to help our situation, and we got hit with $1.10. Those were things that we couldn't navigate around, because we were under pressure.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
You've been surviving somehow. How have you been surviving?
Farmer, As an Individual
Well, you know they always say not to put all your eggs in one basket. We had some on-farm rentals--houses and a couple of shops--and the rentals helped to put food on the table. I also had some penny stocks I bought years ago, and they finally started paying off, to the tune of about $300,000 or $400,000. I had bequests left to me. We had to mortgage all our properties, etc. That's how we survived.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
John, obviously there are other cattle producers suffering. How does your situation differ?
Farmer, As an Individual
Our situation differs simply because CFIA actually ushered this disease upon us, because they didn't in any way, shape, or form perform their duty. They are the front line when it comes to security for health in this country. For example, if it had been any other disease with as great a biosecurity threat as this and they took months on end before they actually acted on it, where would all of Canada be? In our case, they absolutely dropped the ball, and they dropped the idea of retesting cattle just a month or so before that.
In 1995 we brought cattle in. We would fax the information to the border and have them go over it, so that the cattle wouldn't come a long distance and then have a problem. They were on farm quarantine. They were retested. That's the way things should work. Then you know that everything is right.
In this case I did call them for a retest, and they told me, no, they had stopped that at the end of March. So that wasn't done, and they said there was no reason to have them on farm quarantine, which we already had done at that point.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
Specifically now, what would you like to see happen?
Farmer, As an Individual
We've never been able to have a direct conversation with CFIA to remedy this situation. We need somebody who has more power than they do, and I would suggest that would be the minister.
There was forensic accounting done up until the year 2000 as part of a tort claim that Foreign Affairs suggested we make against the U.S., and that was before we realized that it was Canada that didn't make sure its regulations were lived up to. So we would like to see restitution based on forensic accounting.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you.
Your time has expired, Mr. Atamanenko.
Mr. Hoback, for seven minutes.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would just like to inform you that I will share my time with Ms. Hoeppner, because she has to leave. So I will ask a question and then move on to her.
Gentlemen, thank you for coming. I know it is getting nice outside and that a lot of us with our farm backgrounds would probably rather be outside, even if it is raining, than in here talking about things that are probably equally important because these things affect our industry and we farmers need some of these changes if we are to continue on and have a future for our kids.
My question is going to be towards you, Mr. Dungate, and it's regarding the interprovincial aspect of supply management in the chicken industry, which is what I think you could best comment on. What I'm curious about are new quotas as they are applied or given out across Canada. How much does the efficiency of the region or location play into the allocation of the quotas? What's the process?
Let's use the example of Saskatchewan. We have lots of prairies there, and it's wide open and beautiful country. I'm sure you've been there. I would think you would have a lot lower cost of production there of chicken than, say, right next to Toronto or Montreal. So how does that go into your formula or your equation as you divvy up the quotas?
General Manager, Chicken Farmers of Canada
Our system has changed over time or evolved to do that. It really becomes a question of how efficient the processing and marketing are, as well as the production. If you are in a province where you have a processor that is not very aggressive and not a good marketer, it unfortunately doesn't matter how cheaply you can produce that chicken; you still have to transport it live to a processor. So you need someone fairly close to you, and if they don't do a good job, it doesn't matter at that point.
In fact, that happened to Saskatchewan, which went way down in the early nineties in those terms. It took us about two years, but we essentially got Saskatchewan back up to almost double their production in order to bring them back. They said they had got to the point where even one processor was not efficient enough and that they needed to get it up, so they had that size. We did that. The difficulty we had was that they promptly went out and brought in another processor, and all of a sudden the efficiency that we thought we had created in Saskatchewan dropped down.
You have one very aggressive plant now, Prairie Pride in Saskatoon, which is looking aggressively at exporting. That has helped a lot. It allows, on a self-selection basis by a province, to ask whether they want to get involved in that, what is the marketing necessary, and what quota they can attach to that.
We actually have meetings next month to look at whether or not there are different ways we can determine differential growth between provinces. For the last four years, the growth has been shared equally across the country. That becomes an issue when you get to a point where some processors are having difficulty in some regions, and some may not need as much as others. Frankly, the ones in Manitoba are very aggressive now as processors. They've taken a Saskatchewan producer away, having it move over to Manitoba.
So that's some of the stuff that happens. There's a dynamic in there, and we're trying to make sure our system matches where consumer demand is going and the structure of the industry goes.
Conservative
Conservative
Candice Bergen Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
Thank you very much.
I represent a riding in southern Manitoba. We've had a very vibrant livestock industry, chicken farming industry, hog producers. Obviously, the challenges that have occurred over the last five years are having a very drastic impact.
My question is specifically to Mr. Hardy or one of your colleagues. How do you see the funds we provided to expand slaughterhouse capacity assisting farmers? I think specifically in Manitoba COOL has had a different impact just because of our location. How do you see the relationship between expanding the slaughterhouse capacity and relieving these farmers with the challenges of unresolved COOL issues?
President, Ontario Cattlemen's Association
I can go first.
I see that the money that was put into the abattoir expansions was necessary. We needed to have those in place at the time. Things have changed since; the borders and the situation have changed. The country of origin labelling is now playing different issues, as you brought up. We do have lots of capacity within Canada. It's the producers, keeping them viable, that we're having the biggest challenge with.
Conservative
Candice Bergen Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
It's not the capacity; it's actually encouraging producers to use it.
President, Ontario Cattlemen's Association
We do have and we've built sufficient capacity for processing during the BSE years. Yes, with the change and because of the enhanced feed ban that was placed, we have seen a number of cattle leaving the country and going to the United States to be processed. Mainly because we're disadvantaged, it is costing more for our processors to process here in Canada than it is in the United States.
My colleagues may want to add something.